Espectros de Artaud

This is the catallogue about exhibition shown at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, which looks at how Antonin Artaud’s desire to transcend the limits of language – both spoken and written – lived on in the work of a series of creators linked to the avant-garde movements of the mid 20th century. Although Artaud’s reception in post-structuralist theatre and theory has been thoroughly documented and analysed, to date little attention has been paid to the influence that his theories and proposals have had on the realm of the visual arts. This imbalance may be largely the result of the protagonism of neodadá in the historiography and exhibition of post-war art.

Specters of Artaud. Language and art in the 1950s includes about three hundred works by artists primarily from three geographical areas – France, the United States and Brazil – and it suggests that the process of appropriation, recontextualization and translation of Artaud’s multi-faceted legacy is actually part of a broader intellectual history, one that is closely linked to the emergence, on both sides of the Atlantic, of a set of interdisciplinary art practices that called for the development of alternative models of modernity.